After watching the video "Modern Marvels: Antibiotics" and reading the article "The End of Antibiotics", I have realized that antibiotics have in fact become a liability to human health in the twenty-first century. There are many advantages and disadvantages to the invention of penicillin and other antibiotic medicines.
There are numerous rewards to the discovery of penicillin. In 1421, penicillin was used for the first time to save someone's life. Before penicillin was developed, the person would have been left to die because the doctors knew they didn't have any cures for bacteria infections. On average, 150 million perceptions are written a year for penicillin. With the use of penicillin as a meditation, it added 10 years to everyone's life expectancy. This medicine transformed everyday culture. Penicillin became the number one antibiotic because it is able to kill infections without causing side effects. It is also able to increase productivity of farm animals.
Even though there are numerous advantages, there are also several disadvantages. Because the first antibiotic prescribes often fails, the patient has to try several; this adds $100-200 million to the nation's health-care tab. After trying one antibiotic after another, it fills your blood with enterococcus bacteria which slowly poisons your red blood cells. After discovering new antibiotics, the drugs pound the microbes into submission again and again. The bacterium then regroups and mutants are capable of fending off the latest drugs. Once they develop a resistance to antibiotics the mutants pass on their resistance genes to their progeny. Then in eagerness to finish off the old diseases, doctors and patients give them new life. Patients demand antibiotics for viral infections that antibiotics cannot touch, and every dose of antibiotics makes it that much easier for resistance to spread. As you can see, antibiotics can save your life but if used too much they become ineffective.
